March 2008 has some and gone already, and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the people who have contributed the most to the site in the past month as well as highlight a few other noteworthy items.
Top Commentators
Steve Austin (12)
Jen (8)
Trees Full of Money (5)
Webomatica (5)
Fiscal Musings (5)
Llama Money (4)
H_Roarke (4)
42 (4)
rstlne (3)
Lily [...]
If you enjoy personal finance, I’d like to offer you the convenience of automatic updates from this site, The Digerati Life. If you’d like to include my posts in your RSS feed reader, just click on this little button :
You can also add us to your reader or email box by trying [...]
Tax deductions… we all want as much of them as we can. And with the complicated tax code, you could be missing a few of them if you happen to be itemizing your tax return. It seems that some tax deductions aren’t as well publicized nor as well referenced as we’d like them [...]
Let’s face it. No one likes finding out that they owe money in taxes. But for some Americans, tax payments will be the least of their worries this year, when they learn that someone else has already filed taxes in their name.
Typically driven by the desire to obtain a fraudulent refund or the [...]
Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
I was really impressed the other day when I found out that Provident Direct, a little known online bank, was offering 4.50% APY with their high-yield savings account, when everybody else was paying almost a full percentage point less. At that time, I was thinking of getting a new [...]
When I got married last year, I had this brilliant plan for a honeymoon - a cruise. It simply couldn’t miss - seven days of all inclusive lodging and food for $542 a person. While we could have looked at more expensive cruises. However, the bargain cruise included everything we were looking for - transportation to the following islands: St. Maarten, St. Thomas, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Lucia.
Is it really that cheap? Yes!
I could eat $400 or more alone of food alone in 7 days at a restaurant. While the lodging was small and [...]
Have you found yourself in a situation where you need to complete an IRA recharacterization? Here is everything you need to know to understand how to get it done on time and report it on your taxes correctly.
What is a Recharacterization?
After you make a contribution to an IRA, you can later change the contribution to [...]
I spent the weekend making money for the oil companies. We drove about 800 miles on the way to and from a family get together. Although we drive a rather fuel efficient Honda we still ended up paying over $100 in gas for the trip.
As fuel prices continue to climb I can easily see the effect it [...]
Imagine your wrist is itching right now. It’s the kind of itch that just has to be scratched - it doesn’t matter what you are doing, because the urge to scratch rises up and blocks your ability to concentrate on almost anything else. I am sure you know this feeling - the sudden [...]
Time for another net worth update: The March 2008 Edition!
There is a saying in Newfoundland that would describe the markets perfectly.. "The arse has fallin out of her." When will the markets find a bottom? Are we there yet? In terms of market returns, the only reason my retirement accounts are showing positive relative [...]
Before I launch into my roundup I wanted to share with you a post I wrote that was just published at the Prosper blog, which carries a simple debt reduction tip. My message was this: if you want to reduce your debt, don’t get tempted to take it on in the first place! [...]
We got as far as we could yesterday on our taxes. Now I’m going to have to work on a strategy to recharacterize to finish it up. Since the taxes are at a standstill for a few days, I’ve been hard at work crunching the numbers on a possible refinance. Stay tuned as I’ll document [...]
Friday was a highlight in my personal finance writing career. NetworthIQ and Expensr hosted a meeting in San Francisco. I got to meet Flexo, Jim, SVB, J.D. and his wife, Cap, Sam, John, Jeffrey, and James. The idea was to brainstorm about the next generation of personal finance tools. If you want a good recap, I suggest these article from Get Rich Slowly and The Digerati Life. I find it funny that I just finished writing that personal finance isn’t about the tools and here I am consulting on them. Perhaps soon, I’ll detail how [...]
Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Is Generation X Responsible for the Real Estate and Mortgage Problems? Generation X Finance talked about the trouble of the housing market and the place of Gen X in the economy.
How Money Challenges Prevent You From Building The Life You Love The Digerati Life offered her opinion on [...]
No, not the basketball one - I’ve made the Final Four in Free Money Finance’s March Madness. I’m being killed right now by the (quite worthy) article from I’ve Paid For That Twice Already on snowflaking! I’ve been cruising through the tournament up until this point, but it looks like I’ve got an [...]
Discussing financial tools and personal financial views at a finance blogger conference In San Francisco.
I spent the day in San Francisco yesterday at a blogger conference sponsored by Networth IQ and Expensr. At the ‘Personal Finance Leaders Workshop by “The Bay”‘, we had the opportunity to share personal financial views, discuss financial tools, and to [...]
This weekend I’m busy crunching numbers. I’m trying to finish up our taxes and despite my organization, we ran into some problems. Our income disqualified us from some expected credits. Luckily I have some room to work with it, but I’m trying to calculate the optimal long-term solution with a few different choices. Stay tuned [...]
If you haven’t done your taxes yet, the clock is ticking. According to the “Countdown to Tax Day” calendar there are 17 days left until your returns have to be filed.
You may actually have benefitted from procrastinating this time. I’m giving away access to H&R Block TaxCut Online Premium + efile to two readers of [...]
I’ll launch into the roundup by formally announcing (not that it’s a surprise to most readers by this point, although some subscribers who don’t visit the site may not have noticed) that I’ve joined The Money Writers network. The network has been around for a year and included The Sun’s Financial Diary, Money Smart [...]
Original post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Citibank is currently having a promotion for their Ultimate Savings Account and the reward is 40,000 ThankYou points which can be redeemed for 2 round-trip tickets, with each valued up to $400. To get the bonus points:
Open a Citibank regular checking account, link it to a new or [...]
Is it spring or winter? If the 3 inches of snow we received last night is any indication, we’re still in the midst of a terribly long winter. I know I won’t be upset when it finally gets warm, and if we’re lucky, we just might see 4 months of halfway warm temperatures.
But anyway, if [...]
Introducing the Free Money Friday series! I’m always checking out ways to get free money! So far we’ve covered MyPoints, Upromise, ING bonuses, and cash back gas credit cards.
Since these have all proven to be very popular topics, it’s clear that you like free money too! I’m launching a new series that will bring you [...]
One of my favorite sports writers, Bill Simmons blends humor, pop-culture, and sports into a very successful column for ESPN. My favorite column of his is the mailbag. He publicly answers select questions from his readers. Many times the readers set him up with a punch line joke, the way that Joey set up Chandler on Friends for a number of years. This has to be one of his easiest columns to write.
I get piles of mail, but too often it’s from public relation firms trying to get me to post the latest press release from [...]
Did you realize that every March 31st, you’re 25% of the way towards the end of the year? By the end of June you’re half-way through the year.
I’m very aware of this since I work in an industry where the end of each quarter means a lot of work for us. It seems like the [...]
After you have built up your emergency fund, started saving for your children’s college education (if you want to make that choice, which I don’t agree with) and invested in whatever retirement plans are available to you, it is time to build up your “go to hell” fund.
That’s right.
Your “go to hell” fund.
If you are [...]
